


Let my home be my gallows

by deleriumofyou



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Avvar lore, Dark, Descent into Madness, Disturbing Themes, Elder Scrolls Lore, Elder Scrolls crossover, F/M, Gen, Psychological Horror, The greater good, flemeth's grimoire is a stolen black book from oblivion, human flaws and faults, original avvar lore, perspective is king, spin on the concept of the world-eater for both universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:14:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21927280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deleriumofyou/pseuds/deleriumofyou
Summary: Hermaeus Mora finds opportunity across an unforeseen length of existence.The Breach breaks the sky open, a piercing wound from which the world bleeds into the cosmos.Aslaug is only a woman. A mortal woman, with mortal fears and mortal failings.Or, due to circumstance and opportunity, Hermaeus Mora gains limited access to Thedas and encounters Aslaug, and a bargain to save the world is struck. Oneshot
Relationships: Fen'Harel | Solas/Original Female Character(s), Solas/Female Trevelyan, implied solas/original female character
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Let my home be my gallows

His Prying Orbs saw through the expanse of the Nothingness, Beyond realms of Oblivion, unmoored and eternal. Something pierced the edge of his awareness, a fluctuation of power he hadn't felt in some time indeed. A millennia, an eon, or perhaps no time had passed at all. He had no true knowledge of the chaos that existed in the Void, beyond the stretches of Oblivion, and so he couldn't be certain if there was even a way for time to pass.

Delving Pincers held the way open, tore it, rendered it incapable of refusing him entry. He could feel his Black Book here, yes. The world that tried to deny him shuddered its revulsion. He would not be denied the unknown, the unsought.

Familiar green and black, darkness and flame, greeted him. So like Apocrypha, but the creatures here fled from his presence, skittering into the distance. Yet unlike Apocrypha, he wasn't the only one to hold sway over such a realm. It was softer here than Oblivion. Malleable. Powerful in its own right, but still an infant. He yearned to know it.

Gnashing Blades ripped the small, weaker things to shreds, dissecting them for his casual perusal, to learn from their ruined forms. Nothing escaped his mass. Eyes saw. Pincers held. Blades devoured. The tenuous connection he held with his Black Book grew stronger. It had never been dormant, but the thief he had allowed to steal it had taken it to a place so removed from Oblivion he hadn't felt it until this realm pierced the Void.

Fascinating. What manner of creation obscured it even from the cosmic chaos of the Void? The Veil – they called it. Existed since the beginning. A created thing, molded by young, unsure hands. He could see the seams that held it together; fraying and burning.

Perhaps his wayward thief had created this. To hide from him? No. Apocrypha had opened to them, caught them in the stream of nothing and welcomed them to find what they may wish. Apocrypha granted his desires, moved as he would assume, and so did his Black Books. The one that made its way to the thief made it clear they wouldn't have rejected the opportunity to learn more. Someone, something else created this Veil. He wished to examine it in its entirety.

What had become of the thief? What of his Book? It called to him faintly. A whisper of knowledge, new and old. It did not wish to be found yet. It was not simply a Black Book. A Grimoire, It was his, yet not. The thief had not only read it but changed it. Added to it. Fascinating.

He entrenched a piece of himself in the realm, anchoring himself to the connection he still held with his Black Book. He would find a more permanent means when the time came.

An unconscious mortal shivered – small aspects of fear flitted away from her, a robed woman cried out to her – Hermaeus Mora felt the swell of power. Not belonging to it, but the scent...

Ah.

Whatever had created this realm so separate, had created this key. He could take it, traverse its blood and bones and discover what it was hiding from him, peer into it. It began to rouse. Female. Human. She almost looked like a Nord, but she carried trace elements not dissimilar to the Forsworn.

She beheld him and gagged on a scream. His Boneless Limbs led her aloft, Prying Orbs blinked and watched. “Greetings, mortal. I see you have come here unwillingly. I spied on you and your companion, though she is long gone, taken by those vermin. Had it not been for my fortuitous arrival they would have taken you as well. Along with that curious thing embedded in your hand. Tell me, does it pain you?” he asked. A tentacle slid along her knuckles and lanced into the mark.

She screamed, writhed in pain, shouted in an unknown language he had never encountered. He desired to know it. Trace the vowels and consonants, drink from the kennings and insults. She would tell him. She couldn't understand what he said, but he supposed it was to be expected. The key reacted poorly to his intrusion, sputtering like a candle about to expire, flaring up in rebellion yet unable to withstand against him.

He retracted his tentacle. Yes. It tasted correct. This was the same work as the one who made the Veil. She hung limply from his limbs. Her eyes rolled. Pity her weak form may break if he didn't allow her to rest. This realm was not made for mortals. He held a trace of her. He would find her again and they would speak, and then he would know all that she had to give. But, her immediate needs had to be tended to. The tear was convenient enough. He would watch her, for the time being.

He flung her from the realm, whip quick, and through the eye that saw in her, in the mark, he watched her fall.

This place supped upon fever dreams and living nightmares, but its infancy may its own undoing. He recalled seeing a young horse burdened with an impossible weight, until it broke its back though it had shown little sign of weakness prior. If he was not careful, this place would similarly break beneath his weight.

She would sleep. Rest. Dream. Awake or not, Hermaeus Mora could avail her to him when he so chose, but he could be patient. She would see reason, of course, and offerings of knowledge as he'd given his other servants.

So, the daedric prince of knowledge, fate, memory, and destiny waited in the realm that trembled at his existence, yet he remained invisible and hidden to any who may look to such a disturbance. A worm, hidden in the canal of a listening ear.

She dreamed. The eye that had been inside her could see it. Watched. Waited. He spoke to her as loudly as a shadow cast on the ground, the echo of growing roots in soil, the wind in her hair. She dreamed of Apocrypha.

…

_I see it. It is killing you slowly, mortal. How curious. It depends upon you for power, and yet draws from the confines that demands the separation between two worlds. Like a septim flipped in a gambit, two sides toppling over one another for an indeterminable amount of time, and it holds all the power. Yet it needs a hand._

Aslaug pressed her hands to her eyes, to her ears. She'd prayed for a god's help, but none would hear her. The lowlands were quiet, the gods silent, but a sickness had invaded her. Not a corrupt god – but it was...it was something. Something without a name. It had come back from the land of dreams with her, she believed. Those of this Inquisition; that battle master Cassandra, the skald Varric, and the augur Solas, said she'd been the key to stopping the Breach. The augur had shown her, guided her hand, and she'd helped the Lady from bleeding further into the world.

They were goodly enough, she supposed, even if they didn't seem to understand her, and held some innate sense of reproach in nearly everything she did. The augur was among the easiest to get along with; he too seemed out of place. The skald was charming, and made her laugh -

_Do you not feel it?_

But this. This was wrong. She could feel – feel something. Something beyond the god-mark. It was slick, dark, writhed in her as an eel would in the desiccated remains of a whale. And murmurs. Whispers. Laughter.

Madness? Had the god-mark brought upon a madness to her? She dreaded the answer. She never spoke of it to anyone, even after they'd proven themselves to be worthy companions.

And when she dreamed...

Darkness that burned, lights that blinded, endless rows of tomes, scrolls. Symbols she'd never seen before crawled unceasingly along walls, floors – she had looked into the books the lowlanders within the Inquisition kept and she found _none_ that looked like what she saw there. Impossible creatures roamed without stopping. She feared them instinctively as a rat feared a snake.

The worst part wasn't that place – that place that felt nothing like the land of dreams, the place that was hollowed and gutted without any spirits or gods. It was the voice. It was there with her, though her memories were vague.

But it followed her to her waking moments. A mouthless monologue at her ear, without breath. It was quieter amongst people, so she tried to stay near others at all times, attaching herself to the skald or the augur who seemed to believe she simply felt out of place and lonely. It was that, perhaps, and that he was attractive certainly made it easier – but it was fear that kept her close to others. Dread. A child clinging to furs because in the dark everything was real, even the things that weren't there.

She couldn't even be certain if it was there.

She'd prayed and cried to a god to help her during the first stretch she'd been at the whim of the voice that poured from nowhere and everywhere. None reached back. She no longer dreamed in the land of dreams. She dreamt somewhere else.

Something did reach back though. Not a god, not a spirit, not a demon. She had her suspicions of what it was, but to give it name meant making it real.

It shook her to her bones, entered her mind and stole from her what she thought was her language, because it spoke of it then briefly. It wished to know all of her. All of where she came from. All that she knew, that her people knew, that she would know.

A deer staring down an arrow yet to be loosed. She felt like that – and then she'd wake and try not to cry. Not to shake. The voice would murmur, often too inaudible for her to understand, but loud enough to make its presence known. It had been getting louder though. Enough so she could understand it spoke words.

 _Show me. Show me the resurrection ritual your people employ for the sake of these spirits. Let me see with my eyes through yours_.

She'd fought back in the dark before. It always hurt, as though her eyes would burst from her sockets, as though her head was being cleaved down the middle, as if her skin was being flayed off.

 _Fight, if you must. You mortals throw yourselves into pain and danger, heedless of the damage it does, all for the sake of principle_.

She lay writhing in the cot afforded to her, unable to scream and barely able to breathe, as her memories took over. As though they were being flipped through like the pages in the ledgers Josephine kept, easily accessed and regarded with a mild interest that bordered on apathy.

Was it real? Was it not? The pain felt real. The room swam, the candles guttered, and she felt the night close in, and all the things it hid.

It ate from her flesh and bone, knew the song of her heart and the words of her mind. It supped without surcease. She knew its name then, even as she screamed soundlessly and tried to reject it, she knew it. It would not stop. It would not stop.

It would not _stop_.

…

The Hinterlands held secrets. Secrets of her people, of the Alamarri. Crumbs of knowledge, whispers of ancestors that once walked where she now did; a map of fingerprints and speech and blood forgotten to all but the land itself. Lands had no tongues with which to speak, so the spirits took it unto themselves, wrapping themselves in the life suffused into the lands, and acting out the past and present forever.

He wished to read all the markers. To know them. To know their taste and the life that still bled from them. A voice that came from a lipless mouth commanded her to learn of their histories, limbs without bones writhed in her god-mark like worms in a grave. Eyes watched all that she saw, from behind her own eyes, from beyond the god-mark, under her skin and nails and bone and blood -

“Make camp, War Paint? Mother Giselle wants us to help out with the refugees...”

“We must also consider hunting the templars and wayward mages. Orlais will not wait forever...”

Sounds came from the mouths of her companions. Battle tried and true – she would have felt closer to them if she didn't feel like an animal trapped in tar. Her head hurt. She was tired. The burden of the god-mark drew from her steadily, but the weight of the god's presence dragged her into the very center of the earth.

Yet her mouth moved without her permission, words painted on her tongue, rolled out convincingly. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. We will find them.” Pincers held her jaw open, flapped it accordingly.

Her companions saw nothing, felt nothing, noticed nothing. She stood before them, a marionette of meat on invisible strings, being shaped into a vessel by the god from nothing and nowhere. She stood in the great mouth of a beast poised to swallow the world.

 _Show me. Show me what they are. Let me see_.

Mages with flame and ice, glyphs and staffs, enchanters with books -

_Not so exotic. The principal in the same. I'd hoped for more excitement._

The templars caught His attention. A smite burned through her and she staggered, rising her glaive to piece his throat -

_Leave one alive. I wish to study it._

Her companions Cassandra the warrior, Varric the skald, and Solas the augur battled enemies behind her. How could she leave one alive and not alert her companions? How could she refuse Him? God of Eternal Hunger – and he hungered not for blood, for flesh, but to know everything that ever was and will be? Her people had been right, but they'd been wrong too.

The templar went down hard, and she twisted her glaive into his stomach. Something slow. Something to make him lose consciousness – a vile lurch in her gut alerted her to the cruelty of this. Such things shouldn't be done. Not unless it was earned. She told herself it was. He was a templar. Tower-keeper. Deserved. Earned.

The World-Eater could ask for a great deal more than one man. One man to slow his appetite. It was not so terrible a bargain to weigh, no. Not so.

The templar groaned, and Aslaug pressed her boot to his throat, letting the lack of air lull him to sleep. His wound seeped. He still breathed. He would not die well. But he was only one man.

 _Closer. I will know him_.

Her companions still fought behind her. She squatted and held her god-marked hand to the templar's face, to his mouth and eyes. The god-mark sputtered and a piercing pain lanced up her arm to strike at her shoulder.

 _There will be others,_ He said lazily, _I will have them as well when the time comes_.

How many more? How many more? The panicked thought slipped through before she could rein herself in – gods didn't always ask. Hakkon was proof. But those were gods that the Avvar chose, and could die. The World-Eater was inevitable. A cycle of chaos and rebirth and destruction that would never end. Anyone would scrape low if it meant buying time for the world. Anyone. This was not wrong. This was for the greater good.

The templar squirmed beneath her. This was the right thing to do.

 _As many as I wish_ , He explained to her patiently as she felt him draw from the templar, prodding with teeth and blade and limb. _Less than a whole world, surely_.

The templar whimpered in his unconsciousness. His ears and eyes began to bleed. An intrigued hum let itself be known in the back of her mind. He was pleased with whatever He had found. The templar's skin rippled, as if filled with something.

She watched him dumbly. Dozens were less than a whole world. The templar was only one man, and the enemy besides. Her hand shook and her ears pounded with a rush of blood.

 _Find me more_.

...

She poured more scalding water over herself, scrubbing with a horsehair brush until spots of blood rose beneath her skin. She could still feel it, skittering in her flesh, crawling with boneless limbs and an eye that gazed out from the god-mark on her hand. A voice, terrible and great and all consuming – was this what had held her mother so tightly? This inevitable entrapment of being the full focus of a god? Even the god of the lost wasn't so omnipresent as this one – this one that had surged from the darkness between the stars. No one wonder her mother had bent to her chosen god, as feeble minded as she had been.

Aslaug was in full possession of her mind, she _was_ , yet she bowed and bent beneath the weight of a being greater than the sum of all of her, and all that she ever would be. She felt more sympathy for the Burning Woman, if this was the immovable, apathetic love of a great god.

Pressing and digging into her skull, her mind was no longer her sanctuary. Shame and victory became open for His perusal. His hunger had become hers. Food and drink tasted like ash and mold, her wanton thoughts had turned to a need to learn, to read, to know. Solas's handsome face – one she'd indulged to lust over, was now a gateway to knowledge. He was a fount of it. Sometimes she imagined she salivated when he spoke of distant untold things.

What else lived in his skull, she'd thought fleetingly once before she'd excused herself hurriedly.

She was a vessel to be filled with all that he would speak of, yet she was a sieve and all drained from her to Him.

Sometimes, when it was dark and quiet and all the company she had was a candle and a book on her lap, Aslaug wished to tear her skin off. She imagined skinning herself and dragging the skin to a river to wash as though it were the hide of some furless animal, if only to allow herself a moment's rest from the demands of her god. He lived within and beyond her.

Skin, eyes, tongue, ears – He used each part of her to fill His hunger. World-Eater. Devourer.

Her fingers dug into the skin of her arm and she pulled absentmindedly. Selfishly, she wished she could pull her skin off like a cloak, and cast the god away from her along with it. Nothing felt right anymore. She was stretched tight, salted, and hung out to dry. She wished to become a new creature, whole and pure beyond His watchful gaze.

The god-mark sputtered in her palm, a lick of flame, tongue of pain – green from the land of dreams lit the dark room and cast the steam from her bucket of still boiling water in an eerie glow. The eye watched her. The edges of her palm where the mark had swallowed her flesh had blackened as though the flesh had charred without her notice.

He watched her. He watched her, always. She was caught in His gaze until the water meant to cleanse her had gone cold. She sat naked in the dark but for the light of a place that existed elsewhere. She traced the god-mark with a reverent finger, a trout rising to the surface to meet the claws of an eagle.

…

It was everywhere. The red lyrium pulsed with a hundred heartbeats and Dorian spoke beside her, but all Aslaug could do was stare into the water lapping at her shins.

He was pleased and He wished to know what this magic was. He was curious. He was at His most dangerous when He was curious. “...I can't believe Alexius used it and it worked. We worked on the theory together previously but we both agreed it was best it never be...” the altus kept talking, jaw moving rapidly.

She watched his face keenly, head tilted. Her throat worked with great thirst.

 _He knows of it_.

Yes, she thought, agreeing blankly. He does. Clever, handsome Dorian was too intelligent for Him to pass. She hungered, as He hungered through her, and she shook at the thought of a full belly. Her features had sharpened over the weeks. Not Dorian, she begged. She liked him. He was good. He might be a friend, perhaps.

He was silent for a moment, before He made a rumble of agreement.

 _You will need him to return. But the other one._..

Alexius. She would give him Alexius. He'd be eaten, raw and screaming. Brain scrambled and pulped like the Orlesian custard she once saw Josephine indulge in and share with Commander Cullen.

Dorian winked suddenly. “Keep close. Don't worry, I'll protect you,” he teased.

Aslaug let out a brittle laugh. “Worry about yourself, lowlander.”

He frowned. “It'll be alright. We'll make it through all of this.” He waved a wary hand at the columns of red lyrium.

She knew. His hunger worked through her. “I'll feel better once we leave,” she assured him. The Eater would have Alexius then, and health would return to her.

He was mostly uninterested in Redcliffe until they came upon Fiona.

 _Closer_.

Fiona spoke of the world ending, urged them to find their companions and Sister Leliana, and all Aslaug wanted was to silence her and let Him take what He wished from her. The hunger held an edge, as if it had grown teeth and blades and pincers.

“Dorian, go on. The others should be up ahead. I need to ask her something – Inquisition business.”

He eyed her doubtfully, but went.

Fiona was too exhausted to scream when Aslaug pressed her marked hand to her ear.

 _Fascinating. I will know more of this red lyrium when we return. I will need a piece of untainted, unfiltered lyrium as well_.

She hesitated. It was poison for people, even dwarves after a time.

 _I will know it_ , He insisted, _and I will protect you from its less than desirable effects_.

If she didn't obey, He would seek other means. He would tear apart more people. He'd done it before, and she still felt the clench of guilt after she'd discovered the body of that tranquil woman in camp, her head squashed like an overripe fruit. He'd wished to know her, and Aslaug had refused, deeming it cruel.

He'd showed her what cruelty could be, casually, and her hand had burned for three days. He could move beyond her, she'd found. Or perhaps he'd never moved beyond her at all.

…

They won the mages, closed the Breach, yet the World-Eater could still reach through her, feel her, speak to her. She was His herald, His ajar door to the world.

She contemplated walking into the mountains and slitting her throat, stabbing her chest to pierce her heart. Would it end with her? Or would His cycle find another way? Would He, without a small opening, make one instead? A bloody birth that would make the world scream?

The World-Eater, so said Hrathgur and the wisdom of her ancestors, was inevitable. The beginning of the end to begin. Live, die, live again. She'd drag her feet, perhaps find a way to lull Him into another slumber. All gods could die – but that had been debated even among the elders. If the World-Eater was a god, or perhaps the Eater was beyond that.

Every attempt to ask for help caused her tongue to swell, her eyes to feel as though they might pop, her heart to accelerate to the point of pain, and the mark – He reached through and shredded her soul, gnawed at her broken bones, and asked her if she would care to see the world devoured so soon. He had no desire to end the world, He claimed. He only wished to know all of it. He could change his mind, however, if she was less cooperative. There were more forceful ways to gain knowledge, but the Eater wished to work through her instead.

She didn't believe him. Corrupt gods, demons, they lied. Why would the Eater not as well? But if He wasn't lying, then how selfish was she, to not offer herself in His service to prevent catastrophe?

Her screams, He silenced. Her pleas, He ignored. Her rage, He used against her. Her despair, He basked in. It was inevitable. He was. She could only hope to contain His hunger to her, and what she could consume, until she too, was swallowed and then He would undoubtedly be unleashed.

...

One dark night, she stood in the shadows near Alexius's cell.

He assumed she came to kill him herself, scoffing, “Some barbarian justice to mete out.”

This was not justice. Not vengeance.

It was only an open mouth, and a yawning abyss. She pressed her marked hand to his mouth, and felt her god move through her, into him.

The magister tried to fling her off of him, but she muffled his shouts and pressed him into his cot, the clanking of his chains sounded so loud in the quiet. Abomination! Murderer! Demon! he tried to shout beneath her hand. Her god was no demon. He was so much worse. Her mouth moved to confess, and for once, she was allowed her confession. Perhaps because He would not let the magister live through this.

“You don't understand,” she hissed to him. “He is the god of the End of All Things. What would you do, if only to buy the world time?”

A bargain. The only choice that wasn't a choice at all.

Alexius bucked beneath her while He took what He wanted. She felt the whispers of the magister's memories rasping like silk against skin in her mind's eye; the hazy want of a faraway land, and a family he loved more than anything. She watched him die. Her god felt like burning, hotter than fire in her blood, but there was no passion in it.

Nothing burned like the cold.

…

It called itself Corypheus -

_I will know it._

Yes, she thought, I know. She had no problem seeking out the creature and throwing it to her god.

The fall of Havenhold nearly broke her heart. The other Avvar had left. Hrathgur had died, but not before he asked her - “Cub what has happened to you in these lands?” Her old mentor had looked, deep, deep – too deep, gods above and around _the shame_ – into her eyes and soul and heart, and knew that the woman he'd raised was changing; a creature losing its winter coat, something unraveling from its shining cocoon.

Everything had happened. She'd been stolen. It was a poor play on the meaning of her name, but for true, she was an omen meant for a god.

They, once of Havenhold now of Skyhold, uplifted her. Called her the Maker's Chosen, Andraste's Chosen. The Inquisitor.

She was chosen. A swan song for the end. The thunderous crack of a tree before it was felled. Her god breathed within her, spoke to her in her dreams and in her waking time.

Her god laughed when they gave her the title. _How fitting. How amusing_. _A fine role for my new champion_.

She wished to warn them, but He would not let her.

She was forgetting what the lands of dreams looked like. She dreamt of a place He called Apocrypha, a place beyond the land of dreams and of His own making – beyond the empty space in the sky and the magic tethered to this world, and its gods. The dark that burned, the light that drained, the books that murmured, the silence of solitude.

She read, and learned, for He encouraged it. Days bled into one another, and she rarely needed to eat. It didn't sustain her. He did, and His hunger. He wanted to know everything, but it passed through her first.

He whispered to her of Skyhold, and the history in its stones, and all that He could taste, but He wanted more, more, _moremoremoremore_.

 _A new beginning for you_ , He declared one day when more of the faithful journeyed to Skyhold. She'd beheld a sprawling new place that was slowly being rebuilt stone by stone.

She stared almost dumbly at the mask on her bed, so heavy it left a sizable dent in the furs. Slitted eyes and a drooping face of tentacles – the likeness of her god.

 _A gift. A mask. It holds within it, opportunity and victory. You will wear it, for it is my pursuit that you will keep in mind so as to keep me from searching for it myself, yes? I could reach into your world, fragile as it is, and take what I wish. But, that is what I have you for, and I would prefer not to rend your world into scraps of nothingness to fade away into bleak chaos. Take this reward, my champion. So your_ god _demands_.

Her fingers touched the metal. It was warm.

_I will know your world, champion. With, or without you._

To wear it would be to become His creature entirely, yet – what else was she, now? Bound to Him in an impossible way, dedicated to His pursuits and desires. The thought would've made her weep or rage before, but now resignation tinged all of her emotions although she felt some relief that she could still slow Him from completing another cycle. Perhaps someone could kill her one day, and shut His door, and lull Him to sleep.

 _It will know you, and you will know it_ , He said. The mask reeked of power. Strange otherworldly power.

There was no choice, truly. It was inevitable.

**Author's Note:**

> this was finally finished in an effort to get me more motivated to finish tiftm, most of which is completed in my drafts. 
> 
> for the record, aslaug's road was heavily inspired by saren's motivations in mass effect 1. (and if she worshipped daedra she'd probably worship hircine or meridia) further notes specifically regarding flemeth's grimoire, which is what originally inspired me to write this by connecting it to HM's black books, below if anyone cares, or would like to write more skyrim/da crossover fics with a dark edge (i'd love to read them). there won't be any concrete explanation about how HM moves without solas noticing him (although I headcanon that flemeth notices). i like the mystery of it. 
> 
> notes:   
> Title is taken from Hannibal's lecture in Florence, originating from Dante's Inferno. Original quote: “I made my own house be my gallows.” 
> 
> Flemeth's Grimoire: Waking Dreams of a Starless Sky   
>  “The eyes, once bleached by falling stars of utmost revelation (1), will forever see the faint insight drawn by the overwhelming question (2), as only the True Enquiry shapes the edge of thought (3). The rest is vulgar fiction (4), attempts to impose order on the consensus mantlings of an uncaring godhead (5).”
> 
> 1\. being blinded by something seemingly impossible, 2. drawing small conclusions, likely far reaching for whatever is blinding them with probably little evidence or connection, 3. “True Enquiry” probably refers to inquiry learning wherein it's a form of active learning, posing questions or problems and having it facilitated by a teacher who answers questions. (3) possibly means that True Enquiry is what shapes the questions we seek, and likely the perception of the world and what it is we question. 4. If only True Enquiry leads the way to knowledge, to knowing any and all questions, is anything else in the world real, the answer is no. 5. Nothing but True Enquiry is real, and is essentially just a way to enforce
> 
> Essentially going in too deep in the search of knowledge and power leads to a zero-sum answer to an equation, or madness, although not asking questions or not searching for knowledge essentially means the same. A Catch 22. (Madness or into the void) 
> 
> Book Pedestal in Apocrypha - 
> 
> Prying Orbs: What takes the world in lightened sense, Can also seek the outward gleam, They rob the all of essence to, Report the nothing they have seen  
> Boneless Limbs: A writhing mass of heaped appendage, Slipping grasp the squirming slick, Extend the reach to touch the face, Burn the mind, reveal the quick  
> Delving Pincers: Crushing razors, hollow shells, That snap, that twitch, that cinch and rend, To hold the subject, bodily, 'Til mind blows soft and life meets end  
> Gnashing Blades: Bone extrusions gash and grind, In moistened depths of smacking heat, While tearing flesh from averse bone, The body whole prepares to eat


End file.
